Browsing Posts tagged IBM

During the week of December 27, 2009, Israel’s airport security method was looked upon as a better solution to the current system used at airports in the States. Viewfinity announced that it had raised $8.6 million in funding and 5min was selected Best Startup at the TechAviv Peer Awards. For these stories and more, see this week’s 8 headlines below.

During the week of November 22, 2009, Else, formerly Emblaze Mobile, revealed the first Linux-based smartphone. A possible iPhone killer, the device focuses on the user-experience first. SupportSpace announced it raised $10 million in funding and IBM acquired database security start-up, Guardium.For these stories and more, check below.

During the week of September 6, 2009, IQWind was named a top 100 cleantech company and Tufin Technologies, among other security companies, found that phishing scams are increasing again with the end of summer. IBM Israel played a major role in developing SAPIR, a video and photo search technology that the company claims is better than the methods used by Google and Yahoo. For more on these stories and the rest of this week’s 11 technology headlines, see below.

During the past week, word continued to spread about IBM’s latest data-masking technology. Israel’s IQWind raised $500k from foreign investors while in Q2 2009, Israeli high-tech companies raised a total of $279 in venture capital. For these stories and the rest of this week’s 10 Israel-related headlines, see below.

Microsoft Israel announced earlier this month that it is making its DreamSpark program available to students in high-school and university in Israel.

According to the site, the program – which will provide $10 million in equipment – enables students to “download professional-level Microsoft developer [and design] tools to advance your learning and skills through technical design, technology, math, science and engineering activities.”

Around the same time as this announcement, Microsoft Israel also announced Israel’s inclusion in the Imagine Cup 2009 worldwide competition. Imagine Cup, which focuses on students studying computer science and engineering in specific, challenges students in those areas to ”Imagine a world where technology helps solve the toughest problems facing us today.” Students who participate can choose from one of 9 categories, including Software Design, IT, Design and Photography, among others, to create their solution.

Microsoft’s announcements together with EMC’s Center of Excellence program that was announced last month seems to indicate a trend among big IT companies to reduce their R&D costs by outsourcing while developing and building a pool of potential future employees. Aside from being cost-effective, it can help prevent some participants who might have an entrepreneurial flare from creating a company that could turn into a competitor or which these companies would have to purchase for a lot of money.

Regarding Microsoft’s move in specific, four possible benefits of the program for the company are:

Additional exposure: It is good publicity for the companies products and raises awareness of them among potential users.

New products: Microsoft can further develop any of the projects submitted in the Imagine Cup competition. This can help it gain valuable ground in Web 2.0 and especially Enterprise 2.0.

Long-term future users: Similar to Microsoft’s strategy of providing poor countries with free copies of its customer software products, any students who use Microsoft’s developer software via DreamSpark who might not have ever used it, will now gain a familiarity and knowledge of it that will make them more inclined to continue to use Microsoft products in the future. It also can create loyalty among a young crowd that can lead to several sales over a long period of time.

Large pool of potential future employees: With both programs, Microsoft will now have a major database of students worldwide who can be tapped for jobs in the next few years as they finish schoo. Having a larger database will give it the ability to be selective and ensure that only the top candidates will be hired.

It wouldn’t be surprising if other companies also went after students for R&D-related purposes in the next few months.

Forget BRIC-countries. It’s the R.I.CH.I-countries. David Hill of eChannelline wrote today that EMC, an IT-supplier, recently announced that it established a Centers of Excellence program in four emerging markets, Russia, India, China and Israel. Under the program, EMC will invest locally in software development and manufacturing and gain access to the local talent pool that can help with future innovation.

Hill’s article describes how the program works using China as the example,

”How EMC taps into that talent pool to hire the proverbial “best and brightest” is illustrated in China. The country annually produces a huge population of computer science and engineering graduates, and EMC receives thousands of resumes. Through a process that includes standardized testing and multiple interviews, the company is able to winnow down to a selected number who are given job offers.

EMC is able to select the crème de la crème from a very deep talent pool, and the company states that its employee turnover is a fraction of the industry mean. Maybe that’s because EMC has figured out how to make the COE developers work together, drive productive relationships with developers around the world, and innovate based on country or regional opportunities.”

It’s intersting to note that EMC chose Israel in place of Brazil, which is an emerging market that along with China, India and Russia are known as the BRIC-countires and are the largest emerging markets. It’s not a surprising decision though considering that in the past year, EMC’s competition, IBM in specific, have acquired Israeli companies with key technology that threatens EMC’s business, especially storage.

Data storage and data security were hot topics in 2008 and are expected to continue to be in 2009 with Israel leading the way in innovation. The smartest part of this move for EMC is that instead of spending millions on purchasing companies with these technologies in the future and then converting them into R&D centers, it can now go after these future entrepreneurs before they start their own company and offer them incentives to stay (such as a good work environment). It can be assumed that EMC will get a positive ROI from the Israeli COE program in the very near future.

The week of of December 14, 2008 was filled with news from the Madoff scandal, including reports that the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology lost $72 million. Israel’s clean technology continued to draw interest from different states in the United States and reports were releases that U.S. investors are still seeking to invest in Israeli companies. A partnership between IBM and Samsung led to the development of a software reuse technology and WorkLight announced that it partnered with NetVibes to develop new secure widget technologies for the enterprise. For these stories and more, check below for the 13 Israel-related headlines from the week of December 14, 2008.

Bonus: Angel investor and Web 2.0 icon, Jeff Pulver hosted his famous real time social-networking breakfast twice in Israel this past week. The first one he hosted was in Tel Aviv on Tuesday, December 16th, which brought together over 400 people in Israel’s hi-tech industry. The second one was the following day, when Pulver hosted his first social networking breakfast in Jerusalem. The picture below is from the Jerusalem event. Pulver is in the center wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

Actimize, a transactional risk management software company under NICE Systems, announced last week that it has embedded IBM’s InfoSphere Global Name Recognition (GNR) technology within the Actimize enterprise risk management platform “to enhance its analytical capabilities.”

GNR is an enterprise tool designed to help organizations understand, analyze and process multi-cultural names to provide name processing and matching capabilities for mission critical and corporate wide applications… [that] will help Actimize’s sophisticated analytical models focus more closely on the names of different customers, citizens, criminals and other individuals by examining and comparing them to different known names of good and bad entities.

Actimize’s risk management platform will mainly function by analyzing name order, multiple titles or prefixes, cultural spelling variations, possible transposition errors. Upon identifying a match when a transaction is made, the Actimize solution is able to then determine whether to approve, block or forward it.

The week of July 27, 2008, started off with an opinion piece by NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman about T. Boone Pickens and Shai Agassi leading the energy revolution. Meanwhile, rivals in Agassi’s former field, IBM and Microsoft are moving forward with integrating their recent Israeli acquisitions and Adobe is now seeking its own Israeli technology. Of course, politically, the big news was that Israeli PM, Ehud Olmert, will be resigning in September. How this will impact peace in the region and Israel’s economy, if at all, is yet to be seen. These weren’t the only big headlines from the past week though. The full 16 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of July 27, 2008 are right below.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.

During the week of July 13, 2008, SAP announced its plans to open an R&D center in Israel, following in the footsteps of corporations such as Microsoft, IBM and Intel. Microsoft’s purchase of data management company, Zoomix was officially announced and Magic Software signed a deal with Blat-Lapidot, a leading Salesforce.com Partner. Shopflick raised $7 million in funding while it was announced that Israeli startups, combined, raised over $1 billion in the first half of 2008 (the highest since 2001). What happened in cleantech this past week? Not much in relation to Israeli companies. There were however other headlines. For those and the previous stories, check below for the full list of the 17 Israel-related technology headlines from the week of July 17, 2008.

About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.